Of course it is not a pretty history, guess what? The world was a cruel place. Countries went to war with each other. My dad's father was used by Polish soldiers for bayonet practice in front of him. He was sent off to Siberia for four years. The only reason he got out alive was the Red Cross would come and ask to take the most sick or malnourished, the Russians gave the people that were close to death and to used up to work any more. He came here and worked as a laborer for peanuts, rolled up American dollars and hidden inside Life Savor candies to his brothers and sisters on the other side of the Iron Curtain. They managed to escape to the West and emigrated here.
Mother's family had the same ordeal, Her dad taken away to prison by the Polish (mom and day only met here, they grew up in different parts of the country) as he was one of the few people that could read and has the most official person in the village because of it. Their farm confiscated, Grandma managed to get seven kids through a war zone (my mother was the eldest at 16). Soldiers came, their commander wanted to have a woman for the night, they grabbed my mother's mom. The sergeant said they can't take her, she is a little pregnant, the commander would not want that. They grabbed a 17 year old girl that worked as a nurse. She ended up crawling back to the village and dying the next day from being gang raped and losing too much blood. With barely anything my grandmother manage to get the kids to Germany, paid smugglers to get them across a forest at night. The whole story could fill out a page here.
And every DP, immigrant, after the war in our neighborhood had an equal story how they survived. One day in highschool, the teacher in my sister's class said something about in the neighborhood most everyone in the class had been abused. A girl laughed, "No way." and she looked around and everyone in the class was silent. Everybody knew it was true. A dirty little secret no one talked about. It never happened. Go on with life. My sister went to a reunion of friends a few years back. After a lot of drinking, bonding again, people aside would tell stories about what really was happening behind closed doors. And families looking all prim and proper Sunday morning for Church. I remember being at a friend's house hiding in the basement with him from his step dad who was pissed, slammed around his wife, raped his step daughter. Wasn't even a teenager then, didn't know what to to but be quiet.
The rash of suicides that comes up on reserves once in a while? It is not because the kids are missing their favorite TV channel. Same thing. Don't give out any dirty laundry and blame everything on Residential Schools. Sorry, I have seen kids get worse, some repeated the cycle, some said "I will not be like you, I will treat my kids how I wanted to be treated." But the Native leaders want to get political power and will ignore the plight of their people. Blame Whitey" We have a Commission of Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women.
"In 2015, close to one half (48%) of all solved homicides involving a female victim were committed by a spouse or other intimate partner. Family members (other than a parent) were perpetrators in 22 percent of female homicides, followed by casual acquaintances (14%), parents (6%), strangers (6%), and criminal acquaintances (3%). In contrast, males were most often killed by a casual acquaintance (45%), criminal acquaintance (16%) or a stranger (16%)."
"In 2015, approximately 16 percent of female homicides remained unsolved at the time of reporting to the Homicide Survey compared to 29 percent of male homicides.
[ii] The percentage of unsolved homicides has increased significantly since Homicide Survey data collection began in 1961. For example, in 1961 approximately five percent of homicides involving a female victim and 6 percent involving a male victim remained unsolved. The increasing proportion of homicides that remain unsolved has been largely attributed to the increasing complexity of cases involving criminal acquaintances and gangs. On average, homicide incidents involving spouses and family members are solved more quickly than those involving perpetrators with greater social distance from the offender."
"This over-representation of Indigenous women and girls among homicide victims has been observed across the country, with the highest rates found in the territories and in the provinces of Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan. In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, specifically, it has been estimated that Indigenous women and girls are 19 times more likely than Caucasian women to be murdered or missing."
The Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability defines femicide as ‘the killing of all women and girls primarily by, but not exclusively,
www.femicideincanada.ca
And Canada was taken to task over the Native women that have been killed, even though a large majority of the cases are perpetrated by their own community. It is being labeled a genocide, even though Indigenous population is increasing.
..when i was still married to my husband he told me our TOWN had 80 KNOWN gangs
